BY CRISTINE E. CORDI

On the night of October 17, 1989 a ferry pulls away from the San Francisco Ferry Building. The ferry passengers float past an eerie, darkened city looking dead - save the hell fires of the Marina District. An image of destruction is seared into the memory of a man bound for the East Bay.

A visiting youth peers out from a ferryboat and views San Francisco Bay for the first time. It glints in the sun and looks so unlike the Montana landscapes he is used to seeing. He swears to himself that he will be back and will stay forever. Seven years later he returns to go to college, and never leaves the Bay Area.

A young woman full of love, hopes and dreams fidgets in nervousness before getting engaged on a ferry in San Francisco Bay. The ferryboat captain pours the champagne. She and her fiancée toast to their future life together.

A 29 year old resident decides not to move to Santa Monica because the Richmond Ferry has changed the way that she feels about living here.

These are a few of the ferry experiences which have made the biggest impact on the lives of Richmond Ferry riders. Ferries transport us. They take us to familiar places, to new and distant shores like Tahiti, Capri, Stockholm or Kowloon, and sometimes even to the shores of our imaginations.

I recently undertook a survey of commuting Richmond Ferry riders to learn more about their habits, behaviors and ferryboat memories. Surprisingly a favorite "activity" on the Richmond Ferry is to do nothing. To just sit and gaze out towards the sunset, or look at the waves. After a hectic, frantic workday this sounds luxurious, even a bit sinful. I assure you, as I often find myself included in this group, we should not be mistaken for catatonics in need of psychiatric attention. Indeed a number of surveyed riders declared that ferry riding was more effective and a lot cheaper than therapy. In the evening, reader riders (36% of the total and more energetic than our first group) can somehow muster enough strength to sip a drink and slowly turn the pages of a newspaper. Then there are always those riders (roughly 8% of those surveyed) who would rather continue working, but at least they have the good sense to do it in very pleasant ferryboat surroundings. The most boisterous crowds are the socializers (28%), who between performing communal crossword puzzles (are those legal?), tell tall fish tales and plan baseball junkets. Otherwise they are an endearing group.

The factually minded among you may wonder – where are the riders from?

A full 69% of the Richmond Ferry riders live in Richmond, so the ferry’s name will definitely be kept. Other riders come from both the north and south. It seems to be well worth the trip for riders from Pinole (16% of riders), Albany (4%), and El Sobrante (4%). Crockett, Hercules, and Berkeley ferry riders are represented in smaller numbers, with special mention for Berkeley’s intrepid bike rider, Ted Rodriguez-Bell, who pedals all the way from Berkeley to the Richmond terminal and then basks in the bike friendly atmosphere of the ferry.

But out of all the ferries in the world (and we have been on many, from Rio de Janeiro to the Big Apple, to Panama to Stockholm) how did we end up on this one? The riders use the following words to describe why they commute by the Richmond Ferry: "joy, relaxing, quality of life, comfort, great and friendly crew, convenient, refreshments, beautiful views, sunsets, safety, bay breeze in my hair, fun riders, seagull friend, new (human) friends, less crowded, peace of mind, " and lastly the more practical, "restrooms". Almost all of these are impossible to measure.